A Software Engineer Learns HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery

JavaScript (and its frameworks such as jQuery) and HTML (along with its style sheet language CSS) have become a ubiquitous presence in software development. Due to their monopoly position in web browsers, and the fact web browsers have spread from PCs to phones, tablets and TVs; this pervasiveness will continue to grow and grow.

Despite their success, many software engineers are apprehensive about JavaScript and HTML. This apprehensiveness is not completely unfounded; both JavaScript and HTML were rushed in their early years and driven by commercial rather than engineering interests. As a result, many features crept in to these languages that should not have. Due to backwards compatibility concerns, most of these features still remain.

In addition, many software engineers have used these languages without ever learning them. JavaScript and HTML have low barriers to entry, and this, along with their similarity to other languages, led many software engineers to conclude that there really was nothing much to learn.

If you have not looked into JavaScript and HTML for a number of years you may be amazed by what they now offer. Browser based web applications are now often capable of exceeding the sophistication and scale of traditional desktop applications. In order to create complex web applications however, it is however essential to learn these languages, and in particular, learn the many good features of these languages.

I hope this book convinces you of the elegance and maturity of JavaScript and HTML, and makes you think differently about what can be achieved with these languages.

New Release

A Software Engineer Learns Javaand Object Orientated Programming

Cisdal have now released Dane Cameron's new Java book, designed specifically to include
the latest version of Java - Java 8.

This book is now available at Amazon for Kindle or in Paperback.

This book walks you through all the important details of Java, and introduces all the key Object Orientated Programming principles along the way.

In addition, this book will teach you how to structure your code with design patterns, and how to make the most of the Eclipse IDE.

Resources

The links below provide downloads for the sample application for each chapter in the book (where applicable).

PLEASE NOTE: These files are now available on Github at the following repository. It is recommended that you download them from this location, as some web browsers complain about zip files with the jQuery library included.

Please also note that there is a running version of the tasks application here.